New Hampshire Will Lag Neighbors In Job Growth And Housing Prices

New Hampshire likely won't recover all of the jobs it lost in the great recession until 2014. But Massachusetts has already made a full recovery. New Hampshire's Center for Public Policy Studies will present its biannual economic forecast Thursday at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

My expectation would have been to see NH grow at least moderately faster than the rest of New England or the rest of the US, and that’s simply not happening.

Delay says during the economic recoveries of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, New Hampshire job growth was faster than New England and the nation. As it stands now, the report shows the nation is adding jobs at a rate of 1.3 percent, Massachusetts is growing a notch slower, at 1.2 percent, and New Hampshire follows at 1.1 percent.

Maine comes in last for the region – with employment changing staying flat.

Economist and Community College Chancellor Ross Gittell is also a member of New England Economic Partnership. He says when it comes to the economy, the housing market is a particularly bright spot for New England – although not as much for New Hampshire as he would hope.

Expect Vermont and Maine to have relatively strong housing markets, but New Hampshire not as strong.

Gittell says Vermont’s housing market has benefited from certain zoning and regulatory restrictions, which prevented an over-supply before the housing bust. He says the New Hampshire housing sector has bottomed out, however. Housing prices here are expected to riseabout 4 percent eachyear through 2017. That’s about 1 percent above the rate of inflation.